Diski, the official dance of the FIFA 2010 World Cup, which kicks off next week in South Africa, has taken the host nation by storm.

Yebo! It’s called Diski, not Disco, and it’s the season’s Macarena. The official dance of the FIFA 2010 World Cup, which kicks off next week in South Africa, Diski has taken the host nation by storm.

Right from six-year-old boys to 60-year-old grandmas to the country’s colourful President Jacob Zuma… the passionately soccer loving South Africans are diski-ing in streets, homes, parks and even offices. “You switch the TV on to see young people doing Diski,” says Dr Rajie Tudge, a 58-year-old retired professor, in a telephone interview from Durban.

YouTube is flooded with videos on how to learn the right moves — rhythmic and slithery. “Diski has the moves used on the South African football pitch,” Wendy Ramokgadi, the dance’s inventor, has been quoted as saying. “We pretend to kick the ball, head it, control it and pass it around. A group of ladies in their 60s, some more than 70, have performed it,” says Tudge.

Invented for the World Cup, Diski takes its name from the South African slang for street football. “We needed to come up with something truly South African,” said Ramokgadi.

“On every street corner in Durban, you see vendors selling flags of every participating country. Flags are on car windshields and apartment balconies. And everyone is diski-ing,” says Dr Tudge.

Looking at South Africa’s excitement over being a host nation for a world sporting tournament, one wonders if Commonwealth Games fever will ever take over Delhi? “We will never have our own Diski,” says Paridhi Singh, a college student. “We will only have traffic jams during our greatest sporting event.”